To Facebook or Not To Facebook

Could it be that I am one of the last Internet-active people who is still without a Facebook account?? Is it possible? Judging by the weekly cajoles of my pro-Facebook friends and acquaintances, I might be! “Why aren’t you on Facebook?”, they ask. “You’re STILL not on Facebook?”. Then come the eyerolls and disgusted sighs. Oh yeah? Well, kiss my nonconformist ass! 😆

Ah, I’m just kidding. No ass-kissing necessary. The truth is I’ve been debating Facebook for some time now. I’ve heard mixed reviews about the popular social networking site. Some have told me it’s “really fun”, others have said it’s “okay in moderation”, while others have called it a “nuisance”.

I have no deep-seated aversion to Facebook, although I have derived a weird, twisted pleasure from being a non-Facebooker. I’m prone to defiance. Not principled defiance, mind you. Just baseless, pointless, immature defiance as a reaction to the “masses”. Everyone’s doing it? Well then I WON’T!! Take that, you followers! No . . I’m NOT on Facebook! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!! :sticks pins in Facebook voodoo doll:

But after a talk with my brother this weekend, my rebel yell is losing traction. Chris, I should mention, is not a big social networking guy at all, yet even he has fallen in love with Facebook. That’s huge. So I’m seriously thinking of taking the plunge and crossing over to the dark side. What do you all think? Any of you on Facebook? Feedback and opinions welcome!

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21 thoughts on “To Facebook or Not To Facebook”

What is Facebook? Iam one of the most computer illiterate people that you are likely to come across, although I did manage to get some of my paintings on Flickr. Sorry I missed the last two…been out in the barn painting like crazy. I’m kind of jealous of Fred…he does nice work and has you for a model, what more could one ask for?
Oh yeah…nothing wrong with saving cardboard,I’m going to start…may need to build me a new house one day soon. Sorry, I’m going backwards in time here…What is Facebook?

Nah, I’m just kidding. It’s your call, nobody can make it for you. Personally, I have avoided MySpace and Facebook because I don’t see enough value in them to offset the time sink they become for many people.

I’m not opposed to social media, I just think you need be selective and pick ones that improve your quality of life. I can see facebook being a good choice for you if you’ve lost touch with lots of people over the years and would like to reconnect. As a general tool for interacting with people and making new friends, I don’t see much value.

Now, Twitter, I like. I’ve “met” (in a virtual sense) and actually met (in a physical sense) a lot of great new people through it. It’s also a wonderful way to ask a lot of people a question that resists being answered via Google, or to get opinions from people who have things in common with you.

I also use LinkedIn some, because it’s a good way to network for strictly work-related stufff. I spend very little time on it, but it occasionally yields work opportunities, so is worth maintaining an account there for me.

But FaceBook and MySpace have a low signal-to-noise ratio. Lot of time wasting with very little value or return, in my opinion. Many, many people obviously disagree with me.

I never wold have pegged you as a Twitter person! You are full of surprises my friend. You make a good case for Twitter, though. Interesting.

I know many people who use LinkedIn, but I think it’s probably not a place for art models to seek job opportunities. We have ModelMayhem and MuseCube for that.

My concern about Facebook is the time-wasting aspect that you mentioned. I feel like I spend too much time online as it is, with the blog and emailing and websurfing, etc. If I get on Facebook, my laptop will never close!

The first time I tried Twitter, a few years back, I had the same reaction that many people did. A big why would I do this?

I was really sold on Twitter about a year and a half ago when I went to a conference where there were going to be a lot of people I knew from online, but hadn’t met yet in real life. Twitter made it so much easier to find people, to find social gatherings, and to find the best sessions because people would tweet that information.

If somebody tweets only mundane things like what they ate for lunch, they don’t get many followers. Many people use it to let people know when they’ve updated their blog or to get recommendations, or to share discoveries (hey did you know about this feature of this software!). Plus, as a broadcast media, you can just tune out when you’re busy. I don’t bother to read the tweets that came in while I slept unless they were specifically addressed to me.

You need a good client if you try and use Twitter. For the Mac, Tweetie and Twitteriffic are both excellent, but are far from your only choices. I’m sure there are even more good Windows Twitter clients. Don’t use the web interface, though, for there lies the path to insanity. :)Jeff

Perhaps we should form a “No Face Anonymous” Group. I’ll stick with a good old fashioned Blog and/or E-mail. Sorry, but being part of the “artistic” crowd, I simply can’t get into the “In” thing. Now if it were “body book” for those of us who are nudists or art models (but not exhibitionists..they have their own websites!), I MIGHT be persuaded to go along..LOL

That’s a very cool idea. That, or even a more broadly themed “Art Book” would be something I’d definitely check out. It might be a time waster, but at least it’d be wasting time on something I’m interested in.

I’ve been “F*I*N*E*”, Fogged Up (Is that PG-13?) Insecure, Nuerotic and Emotional. In other words, I haven’t been responding to your threads lately because I tend to isolate when I feel my llife is getting out of control. With my life as busy as it is in the evenings, needing a bit of down time would be perfectly healthy though. I meant to comment on the colors blog, but all I would be doing is repeating myself…

I loathe myspace and quite enjoy facebook as a way to stay in touch with friends from all parts of my life. You can, of course, set it to block the sorts of things that can be nuisances. To me, it’s customisable enough to be fun, and not customisable enough to be horribly annoying with background images and music on people’s profiles.

Hey Claudia – Here is my tuppence worth – I found it quite fun to connect with people I had not seen for decades on Facebook and chat with friends far away – Then I found it to be massively time-consuming and a possible substitute for real relationships. So I don’t hit my site that often. I suppose this is not a life transforming event. I started it – I chatted a bit – I went dark – maybe one day I will go back when there is a reason to chat – Ding! Like for instance when my artistic journey guide gets her site going (o;

Connecting with old friends seems to be the big selling point with Facebook. I have mixed feelings about that. Some people from my past I’d like to keep in the past! But again you talk about the time-consuming thing that Jeff also mentioned. That worries me.

However, it’s nice knowing that if I do get on Facebook I’ll have you as a friend right off the bat 🙂

I totally respect and relate to your resistance. I’m also online way too much. StumbleUpon is a HUGE time consumer! It’s fun and I’ve found really cool stuff on there, but you can get so absorbed it’s crazy.

Go for it. It costs nothing and you can use it as much or as little as you like, I’m on a few minutes a day to check on what my friends are doing or to leave comments on what;s going on in my field. It’s also a good way to get a message out to a lot of people at once if necessary. I’ll friend you.

I haven’t tried twitter yet. I know everyone swears by it but I’m not terribly interested in what someone else had for lunch and I can’t imagine that they are that interested in what I had.

Off topic, did you see that Prince Fielder, a vegetarian, won the home run derby last night?

You represent another yes vote for Facebook, and another potential “friend”. Well you’re a friend anyway, but you know what I mean.

The Twitter thing is quite the phenomenon. I agree that the information content seems so trivial and mundane. For someone like me who writes such lengthy blog posts, I can’t imagine how I’d condense anything meaningful into Twitter’s 140 character limit.

Yes, I heard about fellow vegetarian Prince Fielder winning the home run derby! Thanks for mentioning it. We vegetarians are proud of him 🙂

Facebook-lovers: and you thought all that data you were putting onto your Facebook profile was only being read (and archived) by your friends, huh? Marketing agencies and other paying clients of Facebook have always had access to it (that’s been Facebook’s raison d’être from day 1; how else do you suppose they pay the bills), and now national governments will be wanting (and undoubtedly getting) access to it too.

I pass this along not to start any public flame war on your blog (yes of course I know it’s a controversial opinion and plenty of people disagree with me and trivialize my concerns), but merely to offer a perspective that I didn’t see previously represented in reader comments.